Especially with ChatGPT you don’t really need to be that good at it, just good enough to read the script over and to know how to execute it.

Would they make it worse than watching ads?

Hey… it sorts properly alphabetically

Yeah basically all a “distribution” is is a selection of software and configurations, and they distribute (hence the name) that software and configurations as a bundle. It definitely can be daunting to learn all of this at once as a newcomer, but on the other side of that coin I’ve seen many people begin their Linux journey on a “beginner friendly” distribution who come to see that distro’s configs as default and need to unlearn/relearn many habits as they progress through their journey. I think, too, that often people who are immersed in the Linux world don’t have a great perspective on what is/isn’t confusing for a new user and often end up obfuscating things with other things that are just as complicated, if not more.

While I find that I agree with his takes like, 55% of the time, I do agree that Debian and Arch are basically the S-tier distros. So many of the other ones are basically just opinionated Debian or Arch, and while those can be useful when you’re getting started, I’ve found that for the long haul you’re better off just figuring out how to configure the base distribution with the elements of the opinionated ones that you like rather than use those distros themselves. Also, RIP CentOS. I would have put that in a high tier before the RHELmageddon (not top tier mind you, but it had a well defined use case and was great for that purpose).

It depends if you’re using them all. Systems where I have lots of applications installed (especially graphical ones) will have lots of packages, my bare-minimum container hosts will have few. I think there’s also an element of selection bias here, because people posting screenshots of neofetch on their system are also likely to be people who intentionally run very minimal systems focussed on minimizing the number of packages so they can brag about it on the internet.

TL;DR - the right number of packages to have is as many as are required for your computer to do what you need it to do, and not too many more than that.

Something I’ve found very helpful is time tracking. I have an app on my phone that is always running a timer where I input a task and a project (basically a category for the task). What this has forced me to do is to consciously decide when I’m doing a thing, and it acts as a kind of lightning rod for my attention. When I start a new task, I need to decide that is what I’m going to do and put it into the app, and if I find myself drifting from the task I must either stay focussed or decide that I’m not able to focus on the current task and instead focus on what is distracting me. It helps me remind myself that “now is the time for X, not for Y.”

The thing with cats is that they just kinda know themselves and offer you the deal of “yeah these are the three nice things I like to do and the three annoying things I like to do and if that jives with you, we’ll work. Otherwise, I guess just let me back outside and I’ll go back to eating birds and shit.” So every cat owner is like “yeah sure he vomits in my shoes every 2-3 days so I just turn them upside down when I take them off but he likes to sleep on the couch beside me when I watch TV and that’s our special time, you don’t really need to get it.”

This is very exciting, I’ve felt that SQLite has held back the performance of the *arrs for a long time so I’m excited to see this.

I came here to say exactly this - WireGuard is great and easy to set up, but it gets harder as you add more people, especially less technical ones, as getting them to make keys and move them around etc becomes a headache. Tailscale also minimizes the role of the central server, so if your box goes down the VPN can still function. Tailscale can also do some neat stuff with DNS that’s pretty nifty.

I only have messed with it a bit, but it does require a SMTP server because it relies on sending email for account setup.

For that number of disks, I would just buy a case that holds the number of disks you want and build a computer in that case; either move your existing home lab into that case or setup a new one and export the storage over the network.